Yes, the medallion owners force the cabbies to stage these demonstrations. It is true that more cabbies would own and drive cabs once deregulated.

Who needs Uber with free cabbies and an app on a phone. Dial-ins could also be linked to the phones of the drivers via some simple script that made the need known - whence 10 cars would try for it..a need for some sort of central dispatcher of a robotic kind, based on who is available, where the ride is = it picks the closest or the next to share a ride in close proximity situations.

Would more drivers lead to hundreds of unused cabs waiting for rides? Apparently that is what led to medallions with thousands of unemployed WW2 soldiers released in a very short time with no job, but they could drive and they bought junkers. Now the requirement for a car under 7 years old will keep the junkers oyut.

I do not want these new fangled horseless carriages taking passengers away from me and Betsy(my horse).Their smoke fills the air, and they leave nothing for the gardens and sparrows, and in the wintertime youg boys love the frozen amber globes...

LOL, polar opposed POV. The taxi drivers would love to get rid of medallions, as long as they were allowed to drive and use apps for rides, like UBER. UBER has cut the phone - radio link out of the loop and that was the strangle hold the medallion owners and radio systems had on the true drivers. A few drivers own medallions, but are still prey to the radio rip-off.

In effect the cab drivers are proxies for medallion owners.

Medallions cam out of the huge number of soldiers released from the armed forces who know how to drive, Prior to WW2, few people could drive - except tractors.All these farm boy with a $50 depression wreck became free taxi drivers. Fights over fares emerged when one guy hailed a cab, but refused because it was dirty etc, and took another.Out of this glut of drivers emerged taxi limitation laws and the medallion system. They failed to keep the city the owner of the medallions and prices rose.

From medallions to unions and their bosses and the elected officials who begat this system which is inexorably strangling Chicago and many other cities that do not allow competition at the worker level. I would like to see all city jobs open for bid, with the current union holder allowed to match the lowest bid and the workplace must allow any new workers to be non union.

In Buffalo NY, another city ruined by unions, they have rat shaped balloon as a symbol of their unions after all, they "Ratify" agreement = infest with union rats.

Same with Greece. Socialist civil serpents (as in snakes) need to be routed, "Right to Work", needed.

I agree it must go, along with the monthly radio system fee - which is often linked to a large group of medallion holders. So the cab rent and the radio rent are well over $1000 per month

Here in Toromto, Canada, they created a class of cab called "Ambassador", which was only allowed a single driver/owner = no rentals = parked half the time.This was a sop to the medallion holders. medallion are not legal in Toronto, but have become de-facto 'legal' by long useage. This ambassador costs $6,000 as they say, if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a dusk = DUCK.The Ambassador cab is a large body of invizible medallions rented out by the city for $500 a month per 12 hour shift.

All you need is a girl's plate number, search the data base for a month, find where she works, studies, parties etc.If this girl is your ex-wife and there is a non-contact court order out, you can use this search to "accidentally go by her" with a defense that it was just a coincidence. Can also be used from crime stalking, as when the private security car is far away from the sjop you want to smash and grab.

I hereby grant Emergency Essentials, LLC, the moniker of "Super Dumbassees of the Century LLC", I want them to trademark it and then go to a law firm and get them to write a letter

"Super Dumbassees of the Century LLC with respect to certain intellectual property matters. Super Dumbassees of the Century LLC and its predecessor, Intergalactic Idiots LLC has been operating for more than 25 years selling food storage and other emergency supplies. Super Dumbassees of the Century LLC has spent .......and so on"

Yes, Musk is a visionary. One has only to look at two example, one very recently and the other 100 years ago.First, I refer to the additive printer patents, whose holders held up, litigated, lawyers lettered and otherwise enganged in barratry for the last 15 years. They tried to keep all of additive printing to themselves - then the patents expired and look at all the additive printers.

The same with the Wright Brothers who blocked aviation innovation for many years on the same basis. Then the TV patents, the Radio Patents and then the cell patents, all need to be relegated to their own individual dark ages....

Why no internet patents blocked us all? Tim Berners Lee was another visionary, apart in time, but brethren of ideas.

Musk needs to lockup Quebec Lithium supplies because the Quebec Government can give him cheap electricty to build an integrated mega battery factory next to a large lithium deposit = Earth to batteries = to cars even